Punished

by Ann-Helén Laestadius

From the internationally bestselling author of the "extraordinary" (Fredrik Backman) novel Stolen comes a harrowing story--inspired by true events--of five Indigenous children forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden, revealing the emotional scars they carry thirty years later.

In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1668045516
• ISBN13: 9781668045510
• Release Date: February 2025
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 448 Pages

Customer Reviews

Powerful

I was aware of the residential schools Indigenous children were forced into in the US (Reservation Dogs has an episode on this, if you're interested. It's a good show, check it out!) and Canada but I had no idea such a thing was happening to Sámi children in Sweden. This was an incredible learning opportunity and a springboard for me into dive into learning more about this as whole. This took me such a long time to read because every time I read it, I cried. The things these children went through was heartbreaking and I know conditions in such schools were even more brutal than what was depicted in this story. I can't even begin to fathom having my own language and culture ripped away from me and forced and punished into conforming to someone else's idea of how they think I should be. The only negative for me was it took me an awfully long time to remember to who each character from the 50s was as a child and connect them to their adult counterpart in the 80s. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have read this and expand my learning of other Indigenous cultures I was previously unaware of. I know this is a story that was based off the author's own family's experience and I would recommend this all day every day over T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea. It's not a "cozy" story, and it will shatter your heart into a million pieces, but you'll get way more out of it. Thanks to NetGalley, Schniber, and the author for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.